Taiwan has evacuated over 3,000 people and closed schools and offices ahead of Tropical Storm Fung-wong.
The storm killed at least 18 and displaced more than 1.4 million in the Philippines after making landfall there on Sunday.
Fung-wong, previously a typhoon, is losing intensity approaching Taiwan. Landfall is expected Wednesday afternoon or evening near Kaohsiung.
On Tuesday morning, the storm recorded maximum sustained winds of 108 kph (67 mph) and gusts of 137 kph (85 mph). Taiwan’s weather agency predicts it will sweep across the island, exiting its northeastern side by Wednesday evening or early Thursday.
More than 3,300 people from four counties and cities have been evacuated near the eastern township of Guangfu, where flooding from a typhoon in September caused a barrier lake to overflow, killing 18 people.
Schools and offices were closed on Tuesday in Hualien and Yilan counties, while weather authorities issued a land warning covering south and southwestern areas including Kaohsiung, Pingtung County, Tainan and Taitung.
China activated an emergency typhoon response for its southeastern Fujian, Guangdong, Zhejiang and Hainan provinces.
Fung-wong slammed into the northeastern Philippine coast from the Pacific on Sunday as a super typhoon with maximum sustained winds of 185 kph (115 mph) and gusts of up to 230 kph (143 mph). The 1,800-kilometer (1,100-mile)-wide storm killed at least 18 people in flash floods and landslides in several northern provinces.
More than a million people remained displaced Tuesday, including about 803,000 sheltering in 11,000 evacuation centers across the northern Luzon region, Office of Civil Defense deputy director Bernardo Rafaelito Alejandro IV said.
Among the dead were three children whose houses were buried in two separate landslides in the mountainous province of Nueva Vizcaya that injured four others, while a landslide in nearby Kalinga province killed two villagers and two others were missing, officials said.
“It’s not mass casualty in one place,” Alejandro said Tuesday, noting several people were killed in separate landslides.
The Philippines and Taiwan are battered by numerous typhoons and storms each year.
